In light of the recent data crisis surrounding Cambridge Analytica and Facebook, a clear violation of user information, I have decided that it would be best for me to permanently leave Facebook for security reasons. Because of this crisis, Facebook stock has fallen by 13% in one week. There were other reasons that I was already considering leaving, including possible censorship of one of my FB friend's posts, but this is the final straw. Other than security, I also don't like Facebook's lack of personal customizability.

It seems likely that Facebook will soon decline, and that another social network will replace it. Hopefully, I can meet all of you there in the future.

Feel free to keep in touch with me.

Sincerely,

P.S. If you would like to know more about the story, search "facebook cambridge analytica", "facebook stock", or #deletefacebook on the internet (without quotation marks). If you would like to delete your Facebook, please visit https://deletefacebook.com/.

I'm not convinced anything material will change. Except for the people that bought Facebook shares in the dip getting wealthier as its shares price will undoubtedly recover. Same as Intel earlier this year; shares price took a hit when Meltdown and Spectre 6 month coverup was revealed and how their CEO sold almost a million shares during this period before these security issues were made public. Intel shares price? Back on an all time high, higher than before the dip. Buy the dip people.

The same people that volunteer all their information to Facebook without batting an eye also volunteer all their information to Microsoft through Windows 10's builtin spyware. Nothing is going to change unless laws are seriously changed to prioritize rights of citizens over the profits of megacorps.

Same as Intel earlier this year; shares price took a hit when Meltdown and Spectre 6 month coverup was revealed and how their CEO sold almost a million shares during this period before these security issues were made public. Intel shares price? Back on an all time high, higher than before the dip.

Not true . Comparing Intel Stock and Facebook Stock shows that Facebook's stock took a much greater proportional hit compared to Intel. Even Elon Musk and WhatsApp abandoned Facebook.

How many websites have you visited that have a Facebook widget? The real danger isn't in what you post but what websites you visit and what you search for. All that information is collected by Facebook and an extremely detailed and invasive profile of you is compiled based on that. This information is what is valuable to others. As demonstrated, such information finds its way to others either by intent (Facebook used to share all this data with 3rd party developers by default) or by negligence (failing to secure the data or monitoring and restricting employees' use of and access to the data).

The same people that volunteer all their information to Facebook without batting an eye also volunteer all their information to Microsoft through Windows 10's builtin spyware.

True.

This is not a defense of Facebook, but to my understanding if people would have adjusted their privacy settings in Facebook their information would not have been available. Personal responsibility applies here.

What is the very nature of ALL these social network sites? Sharing information about yourself. Who are you sharing that information with and how much information are you sharing? That is the question I asked myself the first time I saw a social networking site/service and every time I've seen one since (including here).

And what of these people going to another social networking site and sharing displeasure in this Facebook "scandal" (really?! it isn't a scandal, read the fine print). "Yeah, I don't like this practice of selling or otherwise making my personal information available so I will just go to another entity that does the same thing."

You want to make it a matter of "but this is about political tactics being used with that information"? Personal info is personal info. Having an issue with it due to what it is specifically being used for but being okay with the general usage of the same information is akin to the logical fallacy of "I don't have anything to hide".

Facebook has been upfront all along about your data not being private and what you can do about that while still using their service. Some people are just to foolish to pay attention until the right waves are made. So hey, lets just let that current carry us instead of looking closer at the source of those waves?

Now, a big difference between the entities mentioned by xenopeek. When using a social media site I don't consider it unreasonable to put on the user the responsibility of thinking about both what you are sharing and who you are really sharing it with. An operating system on the other hand? No, when using something such as hardware I OWN, an operating system is necessary and that OS should not report private data, under any circumstance. Onedrive or other Microsoft products or services are akin to Facebook in that the user doesn't own any portion of it but you do own the hardware in your computer.

to my understanding if people would have adjusted their privacy settings in Facebook their information would not have been available. Personal responsibility applies here.

The metadata is much deadlier than the data. It's the information about your surfing behaviour, gathered from all over the web, that counts. Not the pictures of your dog.

+1

interesting topic

many of us have known for years that FB is highly invasive.

if you run a tracking plug-in in your browser you'll discover bunches of widgits tracking what you're up to.

generally accessing a web page today will cause you to connect to a whole bunch of additional sources --

the thing that is curious though is: how much info can a web page extract from a Linux host? It's my understanding a web page isn't supposed to be able to read/write anything on your host computer except cookies. except naturally when you initiate such action as in downloads and uploads

still we all wonder how close they are really sticking to the rules. we know they don't like the rules and will do anything that gets them past the rules... "they" refers to market researchers.

to my understanding if people would have adjusted their privacy settings in Facebook their information would not have been available. Personal responsibility applies here.

The metadata is much deadlier than the data. It's the information about your surfing behaviour, gathered from all over the web, that counts. Not the pictures of your dog.

Wow, do you really think pictures of your dog (I prefer cats but don't have either) is all the additional info in the 2 different ways of collecting info?

The difference is huge. In fact, knowing a bit more about how data is used in political campaigns in the US (and that probably extends to elections in your country since those practices aren't secrets) than most people I can tell you the like button on other some websites doesn't give much more significant info than campaign workers have been acquiring elsewhere for many years so there is nothing of note there. I say "much more" but in actuality it could be more accurate to say "no difference at all" since other meta-data collection on the internet might acquire the exact same information.

But linking that data to an individual Facebook user in combination with all the other available data if you leave all your Facebook privacy settings at default is so huge it could easily sway an otherwise close election.

Instead of talking elections and Facebook, maybe using my own recent youtube usage and different browsing behaviors can illustrate the point.

I actually have my data clearing when I shut down my browser. The most obvious difference that makes is if I close my browser after this post then go to youtube the link between an individual user using this forum and youtube is probably not there.

If I go to the youtube.com homepage it will show a lot of videos and if I ever counted I would guess over 90% of those videos will not interest me. They aren't targeted to me as an individual. I go to someone else's home as I have done with this machine and the number would be at least close to the same but a few of the videos might be different because a different IP (which all websites collect) is going to have a slightly different demographic based on a general geographic area and different racial, economic and educational tendencies of the area. A browser with no data for them to read goes primarily off of overall national interests of their users with only slight variations for area.

Allow cookies to remain and youtube will get more information about this computer but not necessarily me as an individual. This may be a machine that has multiple users on the same login. Over time those cookies will get it to a point they can guess certain things such as how many different users and possibly even gender, race and educational levels.

Now the videos on the homepage will be different but they will still use overall statistics and geographic tendencies for the most part. Example for me. I don't use youtube much but recently over a 3 week period I did view a lot of "Kitten Lady" videos (she does mostly stuff on fostering orphaned kittens for those who might be interested). This will probably mean with cookies used the section called "The Daily Aww" will be more towards the top of the page but there might not be much in that section related to what was of interest to me over that 3 week period.

Other examples of what might changes might be sports would initially be higher but it will probably target generic sports, at least at first, instead of the few sports related videos I watch so I still won't click those much. It would also probably pick up on an interest in sci fi but not see only specific sci-fi interests me such as Star Trek.

But what if I am logged in or my browser is setup in a way where it is linked to my gmail account (multiple ways that can happen). Now suddenly they will see a more clear picture, even if I am dumping cookies between sessions. Such as, instead of seeing me as someone interested in generally cute pets they might notice I had 2 categories of interest during that span. Orphaned kitten care and dealing with ferals. Since tendencies indicate people interested in this might also like cutesy videos of cats and puppies I will see an increase in those too even though that isn't something I was watching. If I don't have an ad blocker I will probably also see an increase in advertisements geared towards cat owners.

Now add cookies again. Now my marital status, approximate age, educational level, other areas I have a connection to, interest in technology and a whole slew of other info about me as an individual is there. They might even (incorrectly) ascertain I was fostering a feral mother cat with her kittens. Or (correctly) just figure out the whole 3 weeks of interest started from wanting to know verify (or they would assume, learn) the difference between stray and feral but one thing led to another due to an unknown reason for that question entering my mind (unless I mentioned that reason on social media or in an email).

Now take that progression of how much knowledge each internet behavior has to politics.

No, the difference isn't pictures of my non-existent dog.

Mike, since I see you posted before I finished typing all this - I agree and we have talked about this before. Both government and big business plus now people are learning (as I already knew), political campaigns have too much damn information on "we the people". Even without signing in.

Last edited by Penn on Sat Mar 24, 2018 8:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Because people today are more self-absorbed than ever. Which is a hallmark of the world we live in today. At least that's what I believe.

Well, some people are. I make regular visits to Indonesia (I'm off again in July, then again in December for the brilliant New Year celebrations). I was there over this past Christmas and New Year. I got hilarious fun out of seeing people, men mostly, walking down the street with a stupid grin on their face and a mobile phone mounted on a selfie stick. No joke, they were staring gormlessly into their phone camera, just walking down the street filming their face ... lol - some people.

The metadata is much deadlier than the data. It's the information about your surfing behaviour, gathered from all over the web, that counts. Not the pictures of your dog.

Wow, do you really think pictures of your dog (I prefer cats but don't have either) is all the additional info in the 2 different ways of collecting info?

Did you read what Moem wrote or are you replying to what you imagined she wrote?

Knee-jerks can be damaging to both your chin and your arguments.

Did you read it or what she chose to reply to as well as the totality of by response? My point is connecting all that meta-data to the individual and adding the data means so much more about you is known when you allow that the existence of a like button on one page (even if you don't use it) to be connected to your personal info gives infinitely more information about you as an individual than just general browsing meta-data alone.

Maybe I wasn't clear enough about what I know about the inner workings of political campaigns. I'm not sure if going into that might take this topic down a road that would lead to a lock.

I'll just say this - with what I know about the 2 candidates the whole hub-bub could be said to be about I'm not surprised the one who has a history of demonstrating usage of raw data won even with an even more dramatically off the wall and seemingly un-electable personality.